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You’ve worked at the same law firm for six

months. Work is okay, but you’re confused.

Why are people so slow to become friendly?

They smile (sometimes), and then go about

their business and hardly notice you. Vari-

ous groups go to lunch together and only

occasionally are you invited. The partners

seem standoffish as well. You sense long-

established hidden networks of interpersonal

relationships but you can’t quite figure how

they interrelate and how you fit. You wonder,

“What is going on here?” On a more personal

level, you ask yourself, “Am I doing some-

thing wrong?”

Mark’s Dilemma After clerking with a federal judge in Ohio,

Mark, 27, joined one of New York City’s

most prestigious firms. Mark attended a

small Midwestern liberal arts college on full

scholarship, where he played varsity football

and was President of his college fraternity.

Following his undergraduate career, Mark

went onto Harvard Law School, where mem-

bership on Law Review was among his many

accomplishments.

Based on his academic success and out-go-

ing personality, Mark received offers from

every firm with which he interviewed. He was

the type of gregarious high achiever whom

interviewers believed could one day be a

major ‘rain maker.’

On Mark’s first day at Law Firm X, without

prompting, he did what came naturally: he

walked around to all the offices and cubicles

and with a big smile introduced himself to

everyone from the janitor right up to the

Managing Partner. He liked shaking hands

and patting people on the back and chatting

with the female support staff and generally

conducted himself in the same breezy, care-

free manner as he had throughout his life.

Mark was given a desk in a small office to

share with a 25-year-old female attorney

who had started just weeks before Mark’s

arrival. He greeted her with a big smile

and hand shake and noted that she seemed

initially cool but assumed she would lighten

up when she got to know him better; but this

did not happen.

Within weeks, he found himself putting in

14-hour days with his office mate. His per-

sonal assessment of her was not unkind. She

seemed reserved, passive almost, pretty in

an average sort of way, nice enough; but she

spoke little. He wondered about that but said

nothing. He preferred up-beat, non-threat-

ening talk of sports and current events. He

also did not like gossip nor did he participate

in it. Given a choice, Mark preferred to think

positively.

What puzzled Mark about his office mate

was that she made friends easily. People

stopped by her office often to say Hello. She

would frequently leave with the same group

for lunch. How was this quiet, unassum-

ing woman succeeding where he, who had

always been popular everywhere he’d been,

was failing?

Mark noticed other things. The Managing

Partner’s office was at the end of the hall,

and grouped on either side were various

partners, most of them in their mid to late

40s. There were even older partners as

well, but they seemed out of the mix, off to

meetings or sitting in one of the conference

rooms with a client but not joining in much.

Occasionally, he would hear muffled laughter

coming from the end of the hall. The Manag-

ing Partner had two or three buddies among

the other partners. Mark began noticing little

cliques among the more senior associates

as well. And some of the partners seemed to

have favorite associates whom they visited

with often either to chat or drop off work. His

office mate had evidently become part of a

group of younger associates. There were two

women and four men in this group. As far

as he could tell, their affinity seemed built

around politics. They bantered and teased

each other constantly. Three of them could

often be heard talking at once as they left for

lunch.

One day, Mark had an early-morning ap-

pointment with a client in New Jersey and

returned to Firm X around ten a.m., two-and-

a-half hours later than usual. The offices

were dead quiet. Suddenly he understood.

How could he have been so blind?

He remembered his first day at work, walking

from office to office, laughing, saying some-

thing uplifting, smiling, winking, cracking

jokes. Mark was not by nature introspective,

but now he thought he understood: he had

single-handedly tried to change the mood or

culture of the firm. Worse, he had tried to do

this not from a position of power but as an

outsider, one who had yet to be embraced as

part of the group. As a result, the group had

Are You Doing Something Wrong? [Jamie Barnes]

Some attorneys’ personalities just don’t mesh well with those of a particular firm. What should you do when this kind of personality clash occurs with your

firm?

1.800.973.1177CAREER COUNSELOR’S CORNER

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rejected him.

That morning, Mark consciously changed his

behavior. When he slipped back into old habits

he would check himself. He became stressed

mornings when he awoke and when entering

his office; but once he set to work, he would

become calm for the rest of the day.

For the remainder of the year, Mark remained

at Firm X. He kept a low profile, spoke softly,

and stayed to himself. Before changing firms,

he made discreet inquiries. The firm he even-

tually joined was known for its touch football

games and after-hours carousing. He fit in

immediately.

Deal With It.The first answer that may occur to you in a

situation such as Mark’s is that Mark had done

nothing wrong, that instead, the problem lay

within ‘the culture of the firm’ or ‘unidentified

individuals’ who felt threatened by him. Could

there be truth in such self-serving explana-

tions? Sure, but this is beside the point.

You can blame external systems of social or-

ganization for your difficulties or you can tell

yourself that whatever is going on at a firm

is your responsibility to figure out, solve the

problem and make yourself a home here. Oth-

erwise, you’ll have to leave. Social systems, by

their implicit nature are too big and complex

for one person to bring down. That’s the point

of them -they are constructs built for the sole

purpose of producing work and otherwise

accommodating while controlling the worker,

who either accepts this control and plays by

the system’s rules, is isolated, quits, or is

expelled.

Micro societies such as Law Firm X tend to set

themselves up in both hierarchical and rhizoid

fashion. Law-firm social networks are rhizoid

in the sense that they tend to link and extend

in ad hoc ways much as does the always-

under-construction tunnel system of prairie

gophers. Tunnels may get abandoned but they

are remembered and influence where new

tunnels are constructed.

Law firms also are hierarchical in the sense

that they traditionally employ top-down

authority with vaguely defined but informally

recognized levels of influence based on the

relative billings of individual attorneys and/or

their emotional closeness to or influence on

the center of power.

Any time you join a new firm or find your work

situation changed by a switch in practice

areas or a change in office location, you must

re-examine how you are positioned in this hi-

erarchical and rhizoid societal structure. Once

you figure out what’s going on, you can then

figure out how to solidify and hopefully grow

your significance.

Working within any group requires sensi-

tivity to others and to the general culture.

People create culture, and people are chosen

because they seem to fit. In Mark’s case, a

mistake was made. Law Firm X realized this

quickly but did nothing officially. It did not

have to. Instead, Law Firm X let the normal

functioning of its culture solve the problem:

The culture isolated Mark and Mark left.